Boot from Media

Setup the Live Environment to use SSH

One should be presented with the root prompt [root@archiso ~]# at this point.

Firstly, setup the network on the target machine:

aif -partial-configure-network

Secondly, sync the live environment to a mirror, install the openssh package, and start it:

pacman -Syy
pacman -S openssh
/etc/rc.d/sshd start

Note: Depending on the age of the install media, pacman may complain that it should be upgraded first. Since the goal is to simply install the openssh package, it s recommended to deny this request and simply install the single package.

# pacman -S openssh
:: The following packages should be upgraded first :
pacman
:: Do you want to cancel the current operation
:: and upgrade these packages now? [Y/n] n

Finally, allow sshd connections and setup a root password which is needed for an ssh connection; the default arch password for root is empty.

echo "sshd: ALL" >> /etc/hosts.allow
passwd

Connect to the Target PC via SSH

Connect to the target machine via the following command:

$ ssh root@ip.address.of.target

From here one is presented with live environment's the welcome message and is able to administer the target machine as-if sitting at the physical keyboard.

Next Steps

The sky is the limit. If the intent is to simply install Arch from the live media, run Template:Filename. If the intent is to edit an existing Linux install that got broken, follow the Install from Existing Linux wiki article.

Manually partition the target HDD/SDD using the gdisk utility installed via pacman -S gdisk before starting the arch installer and when presented with the option to install a boot loader in the installation framework, simply answer no and drop back to the live environment's root prompt.

Installation of grub2 is trivial at this point. Simply chroot into the fresh arch install (default pre-mounted if coming out of the installer) then install and setup grub2:

Note: The above assumes that if the user intends to boot from a GPT disk, the user has fully read and understood the aforementioned wiki articles and has made a 1M partition ef02 for grub2.

When ready to reboot into the new Arch install, exit the chroot and unmount the partitions prior to a reboot of the system.

exit
umount /mnt/boot # if mounted this or any other separate partitions
umount /mnt/{proc,sys,dev}
umount /mnt

Notes

If the target machine is behind a firewall/router, the default ssh port of 22 will obviously need to be forward to the target machine's LAN IP address. The use of port forwarding is not covered in this guide.

One can edit Template:Filename on the live environment prior to starting the daemon for example to run on a non-standard port if desired.